THE show entitled Synthesis at the Art Center in SM Megamall, organized by Galerie Anna and curated by visual artist Renato Habulan, is one of the most exciting group shows this year. The works are mainly by young painters, with the exception of well-known Bacolod artist Nunelucio Alvarado, who contributes a long narrative, in fact, a synthesis of Bacolod rural communities. What is particularly noteworthy is that while he uses a full range of bright colors to depict the rural genre, the hues are so harmoniously and evenly tempered that they convey a true sense of community among the folk.

In general, this show was carefully brought together by representing young artists with different approaches, perspectives, styles and media, most of which are dazzlingly new and fresh—never trite or déjà vu, nor are any of them echoes of senior artists from which they may derive. Another important thing is that most, if not all, show a well-thought-of conceptualization with the exploration of identities, situations and social, as well as personal problems of the contemporary Filipino as expressed through imagery and its creative manipulation to express fresh and sensitive insights. The 10 artists are Alvarado, Jose Ibay, Ricky Ambagan, Malyn Bonayog, Joseph de Juras, Grandier Bella, Josue Mangrobang Jr., Lex Marcos, Dicky Joe Santos and Orley Ipon, all of them outstanding artists.

Perhaps, one of the most striking is the work of Grandier Bella which uses bright hues but at the graceful linearity and expressiveness of his subjects, mainly faces of young men and women, amid roses and chains filled with all their semantic significations. Among the faces are shreds of paper like long fragments from letters or other texts which interact with the images and allude to memories of events and exchanges. Through the tonal contrasts, an alluring clarity and luminosity comes through which, however, skirts near the precipice of glossy lifestyle images.

Thankfully, the artist manages to assert his artistic integrity away from beguiling commercial ads.  With a serious purpose, the artist enjoins the viewer to be aware of the contrasts and contradictions in life, mainly between men and women, which bear a strong emotional content that is part of human life. There is always something of a reaching and breaking away as chains of love break and roses shed their blood-red petals, of arms reaching out and faces turning away, and the symbols of roses and chains are still new and fresh, perhaps not to be often conjured.

Another outstanding work is that of Bonayog, a mixed-media work aptly entitled Time Warp. This big work engages the concepts of time and space. One may usually think of them as separate, but they are entities relative to each other. Here the artist takes delight in the overlapping layers that constitute the work, so that while it has two-dimensional breadth, it also possesses three-dimensional depth, so that the viewer inevitably enters and inevitably penetrates the seeming surface. But now this has no longer to do with classical linear perspective, but technically measured and calibrated depths, because the greater part of the image is created by the interaction between the painted image overlaid with parallel twisting and warping lines and the projector of another layer of images above. The artist took an old photograph of Intramuros during the war with its damaged streets, wooden accessorias, horse-drawn calesas and the wary pedestrians, and projected upon this the modern image of the Old City, with contemporary elements of a tourist spot, people in fashionable clothes and busy commercial establishments.

The effect is that of the past showing through, like moving holograms and apparitions lingering and making their presences felt from the past. Yet in the present, people casually and nonchalantly walk down the street, completely unaware of history echoing from the pavements and of the remains of the people on which the streets and bridges were reconstructed. The presence of the work, therefore, is in the conjuncture between past and present both in terms of time and space. The viewer is not facing a two-dimensional visual plane; to experience the work is to go through a virtual propulsion of the surface into a passage in time.

Similarly stunning are several of Joseph de Juras’s works combining painting surface and wood. It is, likewise, rare nowadays to come upon such a work with a solemn but delicate spiritual aura. Again, this is unlike many religious paintings which are mainly illustrative of familiar Christ and Madonna images. In these works are a wondrous combination of image and symbol, even in the wood that he uses. In Christian imagery, wood has a special meaning, that of the Cross upon which Christ was nailed, and therefore sacred by association. The artist apparently brings out the particular significance of the medium. His images of Christ come out foremost, however, in their delicacy of handling. With exquisite linearity, they emit an aura of silence and sacredness.

They do not suggest any particular nationality, but are marked with a basic, human refinement. At times, the artist focuses on the hands so richly veined from age, work and memories; in white tones on black, they have the delicate quality of parchment and even of the holy host. But now comes the interaction between the image and the medium of wood.

In parts, the refined images are marked with round holes, as from random bullets. And, finally, it comes as a shock to see such exquisite sacred images to bear the marks of violence, in itself a desecration of the divine and of art.

Here, the past meets the present only in violent encounters. Another view is that the bullet holes reveal the wooden base, if not the process of the work, in a kind of “making strange”, in formalist theory. Complementing the images are finely inscribed texts from the Scriptures or from the Latin Mass with its reverberating chants.

Ambagan’s large work is also a new approach to figures in contemporary life. He takes a midnight train, and now trains have a new urban meaning in the MRT and LRT. The movements create strong but parallel rhythms, like the maw of a monstrous beast, a source of anxiety to all riders. This is the state of urban life today, the artist says. Another painting of his has as unusual subjects the inmates of a Cebu prison who take pleasure in their daily dancing exercises. This painting, likewise, has an unusual fish-eye perspective lending itself readily to distortion alluding to psychological states.

A work that is also highly psychological is Ibay’s portrait of a half-man, half-beast which is expressionistic in approach. In fact, he carries expressionism to extreme because the once-human face has turned into a gruesome beast. Although such subhuman images, such as those of madmen, appeared in the 19th century, it seems that they have a recurrence in our time

We must congratulate Galerie Anna for mounting such an interesting show and we have great hopes for the participating artists.